


This Could Be Heaven or This Could Be Hell

by ducky



Category: Ant-Man (Movies), Doctor Strange (2016)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-28 21:56:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12616432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ducky/pseuds/ducky
Summary: He had given up all pretense of sobriety, and had gone and allowed himself to openly grieve his failure. AU: Strange is a struggling musician, Scott is a bartender. [TW: alcoholism, depression, and everything else that goes along with it.]





	This Could Be Heaven or This Could Be Hell

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes I'm Scott, sometimes I'm Stephen. Most days I'm both.

“More tequila.” He speaks, his voice ragged, broken. The sound of many a man who walked in here with stories to tell.

“You sure?”

“Definitely.”

I pour him another drink. He had drank almost two bottles of pure tequila. It's all going on his tab, of course-- whether he can pay them is an issue for another day.

“It's all screwed up, Scott. All fucked up.”

“I hear you, buddy.” I pull up a chair from my side of the counter. He had begun reaching for a pack of cigarettes in his jacket. “Need a light?”

“Please. I can't get this damn thing to---”

He lets out an exasperated sigh. I grab the silver cigarette lighter from under the table, leaning forward to light the stick he had in his mouth.

“Thanks.” He glances to the empty stage at the corner. “Closing time, huh?”

“Yes, well... I wasn't expecting you to swing by.”

He didn't reply. Glassy eyes watched the empty corner. Neon lights illuminated his face, casting shadows on his gaunt cheeks. He looked haunted-- and perhaps he was: haunted by missed opportunities, by decadence and regret.

“I didn't want to.” He finally speaks. I helped myself to a smoke, placing an ashtray between us. I quirked my brow at him. “I didn't know where else to go. And you've always been slow in cleaning up during closing time. Figured you'd be open and I could convince you to give me a couple of shots on the house.”

“You know bar life is a fast-track towards the Highway to Hell, right?”

He scoffs, before taking another hit. 

“You keep saying stupid, cliched things like that...”

“Yeah, well, you do play that song a lot.”

“Used to.” His head snapped towards my direction. Our eyes met. His gaze was a warning, one that I've gotten used to many times before: Don't push it, Scott.

“It's pointless now. All of it. I'm on the other side of the country, penniless, med school dropout, no job, and my fucking hands--”

As if on cue, the glass he was holding falls onto the floor, shattering into pieces. He curses at it, and I get up, reaching for the broom.

“It's fine, I got it.” I assured him, going to clean up the mess. That's definitely going out of my paycheck. Just like the tequila.

“Some dream, huh?”

“Don't beat yourself up too hard, Strange.” I said, mop in my hand. “You didn't see this coming. No one did.”

“I left everything in New York... To chase some stupid dream... Now I'm stuck here.”

“Well, as an expert on fucking up... I say you can get up back again---” I sat on the barstool beside him.

“Scott, I ruined my goddamned hands!” The anger in his voice filled the room as he shook, raising both bandaged hands in front of my face. I tried to speak, but he seemed to fall forward, drunk and trembling. His cigarette fell on the floor between us, extinguished, and I moved, catching him in his stupor.

“You didn't let me finish.” I whispered. He had given up all pretense of sobriety, and had gone and allowed himself to openly grieve his failure. “I was going to say you can get up back again, except it wouldn't be the same. No glory. No fame. You can't get back what you've lost.”

“Then what's the point?” He seethed, sitting back up. “That's not getting back up-- That's settling! Settling for some dumb, plain existence, when one knows what they are truly capable of.”

I should know. I've been there.

I remember the first day he walked in this bar: confident, arrogant. His hands, his fingers, deftly moving against the fretboards of his Stratocaster, dextrous, agile. Women would throw themselves at him after every show, and he would drive off with them, taking packets of cocaine from the dealer on his way out.

Just another day, another sad sob drowning himself in depravity.

“That's our luck.” I had poured myself a glass of whiskey.

“Our?”

“You're not the first person in the history of ever who settled for the first dump that would accept him.”

He was silent after that. I could feel his eyes on me, seemingly searching for something. An answer. Perhaps a story.

“First gig I played here, you remember?”

“Yeah, I gave you a glass on the house.”

“You requested a song.”

“Hotel California. I know.”

“You have shit taste.”

“We are in California.”

“I hoped you would go for something less tacky.”

“It's a good song.”

“It's about Hell, Lang.”

“It isn't, Strange.”

“Might as well be. Isn't being stuck like this pretty much hell?”

I sighed and drank another glass.

“You didn't answer me, Scott.”

“I'm honestly surprised you even remember. Why ask me all of a sudden? You hated that song.”

He stands up, walking to the jukebox in the corner, popping a quarter from his pocket.

“I figured it fits the mood tonight.”

I watched him, walking towards that dark corner where the stage was. He raises his hands. I realized then he was pretending to be playing his guitar. His eyes closed, and though his fingers shook, I could picture them, plucking and striking the right tabs.

He moved his hips slowly, to the rhythm, and I stood, mesmerized.

I have seen him play every other night in this bar for the year, and his skills have no parallel.

But as his eyes slowly fluttered open, and met mine under the glare of the dim red light, I realized this was no mere skill or talent: this was raw despair, a resignation.

A surrender.

In the third minute of the song, I had not realized I had stepped forward, enchanted by the disillusion in his eyes that drew me in.

By the time the words had run out, all I remember were hands: my hands, his hands-- touching his face, closing in.

We were intoxicated, depraved, wanting. I pressed him up against the wall, hungrily pressing our lips together. His hands moved to my chest, rubbing up against my shirt. His warm breath blows against my ear, as he whispers we should take this somewhere else.

I agree, but not before leaving a kiss on the underside of his chin.

I couldn't tell whether the song ended, but it kept playing in my head as we checked in back at the dingy motel he was staying in: perfect for hopeless filth with no future like us.

We immediately fell into his bed, stripping. I had pushed him down, slipping his jeans off, while he laid there, watching the ceiling.

“Mirrors on the ceiling?”

“Just suck my cock, Scott.”

I chuckled. As always, ever so impatient. I took him in my hands, stroking. He closed his eyes, arching his hips upward when I took him in my mouth.

Desire. It was what all there was to it, I tell myself. It was desire that pushed me to take his hips in my hands. It was desire that made me spread him open, thrust into him. Desire that made me want to kiss, to taste every inch of his beautiful body.

It was desire that made us want to relish in this desperate attempt to give our lives some meaning-- some redemption.

Stephen kisses with the ferocity of a newfound lover: as if he had been waiting, craving, aching to be one. I could taste the alcohol on his lips, smell the nicotine in his breath. It did not put me off: It made me want him more.

“Scott...” he shuddered, as I thrust upward. His arms dangled around my neck, reaching behind, his bandaged hands resting on my back. He threw his head back as our hips moved, rocked together and against, pushing further and forward into him.

We fucked well into the next morning, ordering a couple more drinks in between, then back at it again.

The sun was almost midway up in the sky when we woke.

“It's never happening again, Lang.” 

“I know.” I shrugged. I never really expected this to be a permanent arrangement. “You're way out of my league.”

I swore I heard him curse.

“What do you plan to do now?” I ask. He can't possibly stay in this motel forever, can he?

“I don't know. But I can't play in your bar anymore.”

He's right.

“Just go, Scott.”

I put my clothes back on and went home.

I didn't see Stephen Strange for months. My friend Luis then hit me up with some rumor he heard from his cousin. Some guy died of an OD in a nearby motel, and the cleaner service he worked for had to clean up the mess.

“This is California. It could be anyone.” I tried to tell myself.

Luis didn't say anything else.


End file.
